


Four Conversations Klaus Never Had

by nyctanthes



Category: Lincoln in the Bardo - George Saunders, The Library at Mount Char - Scott Hawkins, The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Accepting your superpowers, Additional characters and relationships will be added with each chapter, And last but possibly not least, And some divergence from canon, Daddy Issues, Death, Drugs, Gen, Ghosts, In other words a story about Klaus, In these stories Klaus is not a woobie, M/M, Please read the notes for further explanation, Road Trips, Sibling Love, There's also canon typical violence, Vietnam, but not entirely
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2020-07-19 08:21:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19970935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nyctanthes/pseuds/nyctanthes
Summary: Everywhere he turns: ghosts, ghosts, ghosts.What purpose do they serve? Other than to drive him to drugs, of course.





	1. Ben

**Author's Note:**

> These will be four connected stories, that can also stand alone, touching on the themes mentioned in the tags. They're canon-compliant. As canon compliant as something can be when the title is _4 Conversations Klaus Never Had_. 
> 
> In other words, the only person Klaus is actively shipped with in these stories is Dave, though references to prior (non-family) sexual liaisons are mentioned in passing. And this isn't really a ship fic.
> 
> I'll add additional relationship tags and fandoms as I add chapters. Conversations two and three will be book crossovers. Knowledge of them won't be necessary, though they'll hopefully be extra fun for those of you who are familiar with the sources. 
> 
> In terms of drug use, that's mostly in chapters 1 and 4, and in the first chapter it's the heaviest. As in the show, Klaus' relationship with drugs changes over time.
> 
> At the start of the each new chapter, when it's warranted, I'll add additional content notes. 
> 
> I'm not following a particular posting schedule, as life is incredibly hectic right now; but these are written, and I aim to complete this sooner rather than later.
> 
> And now that I've lost two-thirds of you....onward!

Technically, he lives at home, though he doesn’t sleep much, here or anywhere else. He prefers to wander, loiter, hold up the end of the bar, stand on top of the bar. To keep dancing and coax just one more shot (drink, hit, snort) out of his newest best friend. To make it last all night and well into the next day. 

He doesn’t need a house for that. 

Though he will admit there have been occasions when having a room in a well-fortified castle has come in handy. Has, however melodramatic it might sound, saved his life. These occasions have typically centered around the tedious issue of money owed; though to add spice there's been the occasional boyfriend, girlfriend, wife, husband, intervening and earnest child: incandescently furious or sobbing or both. Under these circumstances it's a relief to have a gate to padlock, even if the atmosphere inside the four walls - the dimly lit, drifting silence that only serves to highlight the Moroccan rococo-ness of the echoing spaces; Pogo padding and Mom mincing through endless, tiled hallways (“Good afternoon, Master Klaus. Just rising?” “Hello, dear. You look…tired. Can I make you some chicken soup?”) - is far from ideal, has him uneasily wondering whether he’s being kept in or others are being kept out.

When he improperly times his bedroom exits and entries and Dad sees him in his purple brocade dressing gown and matching, tasseled slippers, sometimes with a golden nightcap, to complete the ensemble, Dad scowls and threatens to once again lock him in the family crypt. "That seems to be the only way to get through to you, to help you fulfill your destiny. You have a gift, precious and one of a kind, yet you choose to squander it. What am I saying, it’s far too late to make you see reason..."

But since Luther left for his extremely essential, highly critical, top-secret mission to the moon, he swears that Dad’s looked at him, once or twice, without his customary mix of disgust, disdain and disappointment.

Coke has a tendency to bathe everyone and everything he comes into contact with in a mother-of-pearl glow.

Whether or not anyone in the house he grew up in is happy to see him is a question he doesn’t ask himself. With the possible exception of rehab, he’s not welcome anywhere. Even there he has his doubts. Gabe, long-suffering resident therapist - considering where he works, by now he should have developed rhinoceros hide for skin - has an infinite variety of complaints that boil down to: _You’d drive even the most devout twelve stepper to drink_.

He's learned to prioritize: knows what is necessary to maintain his existence, to continue being the person he’s chosen to be. That allows him to shrug off the rest.

Currently, it’s useful to be in a fortress that holds so many one of a kind, pawnable items.

Also, his brother likes it here.

“If I have to watch you piss yourself in the scant hours you're passed out and I get some peace, I’d rather do it from the comfort of this armchair.”

“You told me you can't feel anything, not really, not in a way that can be explained, so what does it matter where you are? And if I’m so disgusting to be near, you could simply fuck off to wherever it is you go when you’re not here. Where you should be instead of here, stalking me.” He flaps his hands like they’re an angel’s wings; or a pigeon’s. “It’s not like I need your help to fall asleep. And if I needed help to wake up, to not choke on my own vomit, what could you do? Rally the other ghosties for a bedside vigil?”

Ben’s only response is to tuck his chin and cut him with sad-mad eyes. Ben forever fails to appreciate his louche presence, his cogent repartee. Ben continuously wafts around him for reasons unfathomable while refusing to enjoy himself.

He’s lost count of how many years they've been like this. Unhappily together, a co-dependent couple too frightened of the light to experience life, or death, without the other. Despite his efforts, and occasionally he does put his back into it, Ben never stays away for long. “You need me,” Ben says, but refuses to elaborate. He is relieved when Ben returns, but refuses to acknowledge the emotion. 

Today, he believes Ben. He does need him. He has a job for him.

“You have to be to my guide.”

“Why do you want to take this?” Ben tilts his head and pouts. “It’s not like you need help seeing what’s invisible to others. I thought you took the drugs to _avoid_ seeing ghosts.”

“Yes. And no. Most drugs, they close your mind. They shut out the bad stuff, keep the world at a safe distance. But acid is different, Ben. It will expand my consciousness; break down my inhibitions. It'll allow me to be more open and receptive to the unseen. Make me a willing vessel for my gift and help me use my powers for good.” He’s riffing, extemporizing, but is pleased with the tone he’s struck. His rationale, if he does say so himself, contains the proper note of sincerity.

But Ben's not buying it. "Spare me," he scoffs. "You've latched on to a lame, unbelievable excuse to take a tab from this blotter you scored less than an hour ago. C’mon, Klaus. I’ve been your brother for almost thirty years, you can’t bullshit me.”

He slaps a hand against his bare chest and bleats with distress. “Moi? You doubt my good intentions? I am devastated by your lack of faith in me. Aren’t you and the rest of the world forever scolding me? Dad, Luther, Pogo; that unimaginative He-Man Diego, nothing but stab first, ask questions later." He chants a well-worn screed, see-sawing between a low sharp and a high flat. “Aren’t you constantly hectoring me that I need to listen to the ghosts, talk to the ghosts; that I should make contact with them, not be scared of them. I need to - I must! - hear what they have to say. ‘Klaus, be a man, there’s nothing to be scared of.' How many times have one of you tried to beat into me, often literally I might add, that the only way I will reach my potential and stop being such a lazy, useless, freeloading, rapscallion, ne’er-do-well of a shit-heel is to commune with the fucking ghosts. Well you, all of you, don’t believe that I listen, that I pay you any mind. But I do. Oh, I do! I’ve taken what you say to heart, and I want to change. I want to change right now!”

He winces. That was laying it on rather thick. 

For everyone except Ben, who looks faintly guilty. Dearest Ben, in death still easy and forgiving, loving and innocent, willing to think the best of everyone. Even of him. 

He slips the tab under his tongue and waits for it dissolve, savors the taste of wet paper. To say thank you, he puts a record on the turntable. It's one of Ben's favorites. An album that, when they were kids, Ben constantly asked if he could borrow; or, since he refused to let it out of his sight, to at least play it and they could listen together. Sometimes, he said "Sure." Most of the time he followed it up with "Psych! In your dreams, loser." Ben smiles and hums along.

They lie down on his bed, head to foot: blackened, bare feet for Ben's face and shimmery, semi-translucent Doc soles for his. There's a pillow for each of them. It's not like the old days. In the old days he holed up in his room with shampoo bottles filled to the brim with vodka, pots of glue and baggies of this that and the other, laughing at the ghosts as they faded from view. Alone, it was better to do it alone. 

Earlier in the week - feeling hemmed in and restless, in need of a change; he's not a teenager and perhaps his room should reflect that - he moved his queen sized bed into the center of his room. He covered it in oil-slick hued satin that matches the fabric he’s tacked to the walls. There’s a heavier, velvety drape across the windows, permanently closed against the world. During one of his nighttime perambulations he rediscovered a twenty-by-twenty room off the kitchen: floor to ceiling shelves bowed under the cumulative weight of china, crystal and silver. There are candelabras: tall and sleek, utilitarian and bland, expansive and encrusted with vines and butterflies. He adds blood red, snow white, black as night candles to them and scatters them across his room. “I want it to look like a Goth Versailles,” he told Mom on the stairs where he bumped into her, panting, arms creaking under the weight of two fileboxes stacked one on top of the other. She bent her head, processors and micro-processors churning. When she acquired the necessary information she righted it on her spine and clasped her hands in a prayer position between her breasts.

“How clever, dear! Let me help you.” She whisked the boxes out of his crabbed, already burning fingers and carried them up the remaining three and half flights of stairs, elbow crooked and hand held high above her right shoulder, like she was waiting tables. 

Listening to the music, Ben’s music, he’s reminded of a mission, one he could’ve sworn he’d forgotten. Shortly after their big debut at the bank they were called in to assist with a more hush hush assignment: rescuing a billionaire who’d locked himself in his panic room and was sawing off his leg with a samurai sword. The voices in the old codger's head were telling him it would quintuple his money. Luther ran point. Allison rumored the Doberman Pinschers to sleep. The armed guards had cotton balled their ears for the occasion, bosses’ orders, Allison's gift already old news to those with deep pockets. Their loyalty to their employer was commendable, if deeply stupid. Diego swiftly dispatched half of them, then sprinted inside to cover Five, who’d teleported into the vault and was making quick work of the security code holding the foot thick steel door in place. Ben hung back to handle the remaining guards. Lower lip trembling, forehead beaded with sweat, he fisted his hands, squinched his eyes shut and took a deep, deep breath. He hummed, the kind of sound that might summon a swarm of bees. His body rippled, jello on a plate. As the tentacles materialized Ben cried out, a burst of pain and fear. The sound curled his hair, curdled his stomach juices. They were always eager to kill but never expeditiously, via a chicken wring of the neck. They preferred a medieval, Boschian dismemberment: suffused with horror, a cautionary tale. Though who it was meant for they didn't realize until it was too late. He shrieked in sympathy, his bowels loosened. He clutched his stomach with one hand and stuffed the other in his mouth. Afterwards, Ben couldn’t stop a tear or two from dripping from the bottom of his mask. He patted the top of his head in an awkward approximation of comfort. When Ben wasn’t looking, he wiped his hand on his pants and counted the minutes until he could scrub it clean.

Why he was at the mansion, on this particular mission? Oh yes, to commune with the spirit tormenting the pathetic old bastard. In the end he turned out to be neither particularly pathetic nor especially old, but absolutely a bastard. The ghost of second wives past had quite a few things to tell him, as the medics eased him and his dangling, splinted leg onto a stretcher.

“Is it because I know you? Is that why you’re always hanging around? Is it because you know me? Is that why you won’t leave me alone? Is it because I watched you die? Bursting open like a ripe watermelon, all red, juicy pulp. Blossoming like the world’s most heartbreaking flower, and there was no putting Humpty Dumpty back together again?”

“That’s highly poetical of you, Klaus,” Ben says wryly. He waits for him to say more, but Ben only twitches a boot through his face.

Perhaps a more direct approach is called for.

“Did it hurt?”

“When? What?”

“At the end. With the…you know. Your power.”

“Of course it hurt. What kind of a question is that? Are you making fun of me?” Ben practically shouts, hoarse with indignation.

Still supine, he raises his hands up so Ben can see them, waggles them in apology.

“I’m sorry. Don’t freak out on me. You’re like Goldilocks, anyone ever tell you that? This question is too vague, that question is too direct. I only respond to questions that are just right. Well, I’m trying. Give me some credit. Don’t I deserve the benefit of the doubt?”

Ben flickers in and out of view: sulking, deliberating. _To stay or not to stay?_

Will he ever stop throwing these temper tantrums? Ben has come to a sticky end. He has gone over the Big Ridge. Rode the Pale Horse. Joined the Choir Invisible. Crossed the Jordan. Passed beyond the veil. He’s fucking dead. As a doornail as a dodo as a deceased person. Isn’t the time for sensitivity long past? He’s about to point this out to Ben for the hundredth, thousandth, millionth time.

But then he wonders.

What else does Ben own except time, time to nitpick and squabble, observe and judge? What else does he possess but time to catalog his multitudinous fuck-ups, time to take offense with his lack of drawing room etiquette?

Maybe, shocking as the thought may be, Ben's behavior is a reflection of his own, rather depressing situation? Maybe Ben’s behavior has more to do with the fact that he died young, four of his six siblings bearing witness to his agony, and much less to do with a beyond the grave mission to turn him, Klaus the drug addled coward and legendary disaster, into a better person?

He’s embarrassed to realize he’s never seriously considered this possibility, never truly contemplated what it means, how it feels to be Ben.

He might not love Ben more than he loves himself, someone has to be his champion and he's nominated himself; but at this moment, he loves Ben enough to give him time, his sole pleasure in the afterlife.

And that's when he sees them, rising like tendrils of steam from a boiling kettle. The little, big, medium tentacles, all a mottled, sickly shade of puce. He slaps himself across the cheek. Cheeks. Left, right, left; right again for good measure. They’re still there, more orangey-green than purplish-brown, but what does it matter what size, what color they are? The important fact is they are inside Ben, and they are moving. He props himself up on shaky elbows. They’re under the surface of Ben’s skin, coiling in his gut like a nest of snakes waking from hibernation. They don’t exist in this dimension, that’s what Ben has repeatedly told him, but he swears he can smell them: wet and mossy, like the bottom of a river.

“Why are you looking at me like that? Is something wrong?” Ben is no longer tetchy. He’s worried. “Don’t tell me this is going to be a bad trip. I can’t handle ten hours of you trying to peel your skin off with a butter knife, shrieking that Dad’s actually St. Peter come to judge us all for our sins and is bound to found us wanting.”

He takes a moment to consider what would be the diplomatic, the tactful but not overly circumspect way to re-phrase his earlier questions.

Fuck it.

“Stop being coy and tell me. Did it always hurt when they came out? Not just at the end?” Ben reaches for the pillow under his head, before he remembers he can’t hide behind it, not in front of him, not when he wants to see him. He has to settle for flipping up his hoodie and lurking in its shadows, covering his eyes with a bent elbow. Ben’s legs rapidly move: in and out, in and out, in and out. 

“Yeeessss…”

“Did it hurt a lot?” he wants to ask. “Was it comparable to pebbles of hail against your chest or a wrecking ball? On a scale of one to ten - where one is _Stop! That tickles!_ and ten is _I cannot speak because my lungs are slowly being pulled through a quarter inch hole in my back ribs, and I’d gouge out my own eyes out to make it stop_ \- how did it feel?

But he can hear something. A chortle? A cough? A sibilant command. “Shhh….quiet. Wait. Be patient.” So he shuts his mouth and covers it with his hand. It helps him to remember.

“Dad told me to breath through it. He had a multitude of platitudes. ‘Pain is weakness leaving the body. It’s an art to live with pain…mix the light into the grey.’ And let’s not forget, ‘The pain of the mind is worse than the pain of the body.’” Ben sighs, pensive. “I wonder, I wonder a lot,” he mumbles. He strains to hear him. “What if I’d gotten better advice? Gone to a monastery in Tibet or something, like Bruce Wayne but without the obnoxious Orientalism, maybe I could have controlled them better. Maybe I’d still be…” He trails off and turns his face to the side. His legs bounce; if he were corporeal, the mattress would be squeaking.

Do ghosts cry? Of course they do. Does Ben's ghost cry? He doesn't know.

He waits to hear if the tentacles have more instructions for him. They do. “Keep it simple, moron. Try to remember: this is not about you.”

“That must have been terrible for you, to have so little support. You were just a kid, and only had us to rely on. And we were all self-centered assholes. Still are. I’m really sorry, Ben.” He reaches out a hand and pats Ben’s leg. He swears that, for a moment, it makes contact, that his fingers touch flesh before they slide through and his open hand slips along his bedspread. Ben turns towards him; he lifts up his hoodie and looks at him. His legs stop moving.

“It wasn’t fun. And I know you are.”

“Did dear old Dad get a single thing right? It’s like he’s in competition with himself.” His imitation is the best, now that Allison is off pursuing her Hollywood dreams. “Which one of these god forsaken, pathetic excuses, a waste of my hard earned money, any of the other thirty-five would have provided a better return on my investment can I fuck up the most,” he grumbles. “Did I hear childish giggles? See smiles of pleasure? Sense joy? Outrageous! Unacceptable!They cannot be allowed to forget that this is the house where fun comes to die. Pogo! Put that on a plaque, in each of the children’s room. Where? On their door! No, above their beds. I want it to be the first thing they see every morning, when they wake up. When? Yesterday!”Thanks to the fuzzy, warm feelings spreading through him, his words emerge light-hearted, silly; if they’re tinged with bitterness, it’s a bitterness only he can hear.

In his efforts to appear unmoved, Ben silently shivers and quakes. When he gives up, their laughter swells and subsides, then crashes in, stronger than before. They feed off each other. One of them slows down, stops, but looks at the other, and they’re off again. His joke isn’t especially funny, or new, but they can’t stop laughing. They've edged into hysteria. They’re looking for something to be happy about. Minutes later - sides aching, eyes streaming, dizzy with endorphins and chemical fungus and whatever painful itch of physicality Ben experiences, his phantom limb - they trickle into silence. The candles flare. They dim again, but the light they shed seems brighter than before, as if they approve.

Ben nods at the stereo. “Play something else. Your choice.”

He launches himself onto the bed, forcing Ben to disappear while he body surfs across the mattress, pleather pants skimming him off it and onto the floor. He clambers back into position, face once again near the soles of Ben’s boots.

The sharp edges of himself are softening, are melting, are bleeding into the bed, blending into the room. He _is_ the room. He can feel the presence of other presences. Not only the other ghosts, for once silent, respecting this moment he and Ben are sharing, but the objects in his room, their hidden selves: his posters now covered in fabric, his records, the crates in which they rest, his faded settee, the bed. He is taut and bouncy and stuffed full of horse hair. He smells musky and has skin made of blood warm, furred satin. He has a sudden craving for apples and sugar. How long has been in this form? He tries to remember, but time and memory have lost all significance. What’s important is only this minute, this second. He can’t remember being any other way. He’s a bridge. No. He’s a semaphore. Not flags waving anachronistically on a mountaintop, but a variable. A variable that can be used to solve problems, to achieve synchronization in the invisible to the naked eye multi-processing environment of this world. His second-to-last stint in rehab he read a computer science textbook someone left in the common room. At the time it didn't make sense. It does now. He is here to share ghostly knowledge and resources with the world, but in a way that doesn't overwhelm the mundanes. Or the ghosts. He signals. _Wait your turn, please, this ghost, this human are otherwise occupied. You, yes you. Step forward. It's time to manifest, we may begin._

His room in this dismal grand house, the place where he first experienced what lies beyond. He embraces it. He loves Pogo and Mom and - no, not Dad, he’s not that far gone. He loves all his brothers and sisters: mildewy Vanya and grumptastic Five, god bless him and keep him safe, wherever he might be. He loves conscientious, sanctimonious, virginal Luther and sly Allison. He even loves Diego, the simpleton, the literal moron.

He should open the curtains, let the moonlight in. He should open the windows, listen to wheels creak and clang down cobblestoned streets. Feel the wet breeze on his face, portents of rain. He could climb to the roof and _fly_ , but he’s awfully comfortable, here with Ben. He sits up, to look at Ben, and Ben giggles.

“You’re an idiot, Klaus. And I think I’m tripping with you. You know that's not technically possible, that's not how ghost physics operates.” Ben somersaults across the bed, and they’re lying next to each other, face to face. Ben's hoodie has changed color, is electric blue. If he could, he’d hug Ben; he'd hold his hand.

“I see you. You’re here. You’re not alone. You’re not forgotten,” he says. 

"I know," Ben says. "Neither are you."

Did the tentacles just _wink at him_?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A sentence re: semaphores ("A variable that can be used to solve problems, to achieve synchronization in the invisible to the naked eye multi-processing environment of this world") is snagged from Wikipedia. The rest of my knowledge comes from twenty minutes on Stack Overflow. I am not an engineer. All apologies to those of you who are. In my defense...neither is Klaus, even when he's not tripping.


	2. Carolyn and Margaret

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have not given up on this fic! Though it's been a few weeks (cough) since my last post. 
> 
> A crossover between _The Library at Mount Char_ and _Umbrella Academy_ is something I've wanted to write for soooo long. But what I thought was a simple idea took quite a while to get into a shape I'm reasonably satisfied with. Many thanks to D. for the beta and encouragement.
> 
> I've tried to write this so that if you aren't familiar with one of the sources, it will still be comprehensible. Additionally, I've kept spoilers to a minimum.
> 
> CW for drug abuse, body horror, brief descriptions of violence, brief references to torture, and mentions of familial physical and emotional abuse. Nothing beyond what's in canon. But both of these canons are a doozy.

It was the bare feet that caught his attention: narrow in the back and broad in the front, with high arches and cracked heels; both pinkies stained blue-black from a far-off, oft-repeated injury. Long, dexterous toes - intelligent ones with enough space between each to insert a finger - curled around the metal rest of the bar stool. He was tempted to reach down and trace the veins that pulsed below the surface of the stretched taut skin. 

But he’s getting ahead of himself.

*

First there was a road trip. There were road trips.

Unencumbered by family or friends he was free to wander; and he did. For weeks, even months at a time. His travels took him all over the country: to Pensacola, Tempe, Benton and Montpelier; Boise, Pawtucket, Fresno and Tuscaloosa; Eugene, Milwaukee, Cincinnati and Kansas City. Both of them. He went to Hollywood, stood in the crowd as Allison’s Walk of Fame star was unveiled. Face covered in a surgical mask, he heckled her.

“Wanna be! Poser! Tell them how you got all this!” he honked. Then slipped into the crowd when she looked up, eyes fiery and unrepentant, the tip of her tongue slipping between her lips, to better taste his familiar, never to be forgotten voice.

He didn’t travel the country in style. There were no chauffeur driven Range Rovers, racing green Jaguars or first class plane tickets put at his disposal. Only long haul buses, his right thumb and, when he felt flush, the train.

He liked the train. Bug snug in a bunk, listening to the rhythm of the rails, rocked and rocked like the babe in arms he was for a week or two. Ensconced in the smoking car, the full range of humanity on display. Rubbing elbows, sharing lighters and life stories in a rectangular room with molded plastic chairs bolted to the floor. Where the ashtrays overflowed and the smoke was so thick it was gratuitous to light his own cigarette. He looked out his window at the amber waves of grain, the purple mountains and fruited plains. Cupped each in his palm, watched them trickle like water through his fingers as he moved onwards, backwards, away from them at one hundred miles an hour.

During these journeys, he passed as a civilized, sober and safely amusing traveling companion.

For a time. 

Inevitably, reality set in. He got tweaky or developed an insatiable case of the munchies. Burst into tears, real tears. Tears that once they started gushing were impossible to stop.

And of course, without fail, like the passing of the seasons or drugs with diminishing returns or Dad's choleric disappointment, _they_ happened. The ghosts. Ghosts that lingered by the sites of their accidents: next to crosses planted off blacktopped shoulders; on the seats of white bicycles chained to lampposts; around the sharp turns where engine drivers slowed to a crawl, the memory of Casey Jones and the damage he did forever green. Ghosts who reeled from their untimely deaths. Ghosts who brandished mangled limbs, clutched the edges of ripped open bowels, failed to hold in proximations of organs.

They saw him. Beseeched him to talk to them, listen to them, look at them.

He didn't go so far as to acknowledge them, but he heard them. No matter how quickly he sped by.

When drivers tightened fingers round their steering wheels and scanned the road, sought a police car to flag down. When he fell to earth and required a discreet place to reattain liftoff. When Ben - sitting on the dashboard, the top of the bus seat, the space between bags in the overhead rack (he could have had a career as a contortionist) - sighed and frowned, switched the cross of his legs and laced his fingers the other way. Well, those were his signals, like the chalk scribbles hobos once used to pass information to each other, it was time to switch tracks.

*

Over the course of his travels he learned that, beauty and terror notwithstanding, America by way of the roads (45, 60, 55, 255, 80, 280, 66 oh god make it stop) was very much the same same anodyne song from one town, county, state to the next. He found his bearings by checking what was stamped on the majority of license plates in the parking lot, observing what landmarks were most heavily featured on the rack of postcards at the Gas-N-Sip, or simply asking the long-haul trucker he was buying a handful of pills from where the hell he had ended up. 

There were towns, though, where license plates, postcards and direct questions were of little help. Suburbia. Did you know that every state has an Oak Bluff, a Lebanon, a Riverdale and a Mt. Vernon? He’s passed through more than one of each. All he saw were shuttered birthday cake houses of assorted layers and shades of frosting. Empty driveways and barren front porches. No one stood on the flagstone patios that abutted emerald green lawns, tending to hot dogs, burgers and corn. No children splashed in the chlorine blue pools, below or above ground. He wondered how the locals traveled from home or work to the local watering holes because he passed no cars, saw no people on the patches of concrete that passed for sidewalks. Yet he walked inside and, more often than not, there they were.

In these towns, it was better to blend; or attempt to. He wore shoes and a shirt. Experimented with jeans that were blue and t-shirts that were white ( _slacks_ that were khaki and _oxfords_ that were blue). He took it easy on the eyeliner.

With these new clothes came a new persona: an ambitious, early thirty-something. A Bob. He was in town to interview with a local branch of a Big 5 consulting firm; was interested in mergers and acquisitions. Deciding who should be fired and who should receive a thirty percent reduction in salary and thank him for the privilege; finding out how quickly he could run a formerly successful company into the ground. 

Absolutely childish. He would have been the first to admit it, if anyone had asked. But what began as a lark, a harmless bit of fun on the local yokels, he found himself taking seriously and then more seriously. It felt good to try on different lives (Bob wasn't the only costume in his trunk). To be asked, “Who are you? What do you do? Where do you come from” and have a reply at the ready. An answer that didn’t expose him as a circus freak or reduce him to his bad habits; that allowed him to move beyond himself into the realm of not especially witty banter. 

*

At a moment of in-between - neither hot nor cold, sunny nor rainy, summer nor winter, sunrise nor sunset - he found himself in a bar in one of these bland as a rice cake and half as tasty towns. He put on his Bob face and entered a local bar that wasn’t a bar but a private club. A slight entry fee, a solemn finger against the nose to demonstrate his understanding this wasn’t the place for drunken shenanigans. Inside, nothing but class. Dark wood oiled soft as a baby’s bottom. Manly brass and leather. Brown and black and cream tile in a pyramid pattern that floated when you looked directly at it. He bent down and touched it, to assure himself he stood on solid ground. 

The smartly dressed hostess - dark pants and white shirt, a silky buttoned vest, an unnecessary sleeve garter and watch chain - ushered him to the single, unoccupied seat. He swung a leg over it and leaned both elbows on the bar: clean and zinc. Around him, voices muted by a jukebox stocked with Ella, Dinah and Rosemary, backed by big bands that swung. It was the kind of music Diego danced with Mom to. With her, always the gentleman, and far more graceful on his feet than he had any right to be.

The night would begin here. With a bit of polish, some spit and shine; his chin held high, a semi-but-not-obnoxiously-confident strut that showed he belonged. He might gild the lily with short bumps or long trails in a members only back room. Chat with those whom, it turned out, he had a great deal in common.

As the night marched on he would make his way down the ladder. To dimmer establishments with woodier, stickier bars. The dry mouthed high would ease off and with no more in sight he would settle. For the half smoked stub left in the ashtray. The two-thirds finished, lukewarm drinks of those who had called it a night. The flakes stuck to someone’s sleeve. A someone who, bathed in the forgiving twinkle of the bar lights, was angelic and full of promise. Smelled of cigarettes and last month’s wash. A someone who’d slip a hand in his pants and promise him an hour of fun - him on his knees, gagging for it - but turn out to be good for a minute, perhaps two. Not the slightest bit embarrassed, they’d angle for a couple of bucks and a ride to a house where he wasn’t invited inside.

At his final stop, a place he chose because no wanted him there, he would turn truculent. Elbow people aside and crawl on top of the bar to get the bartender’s - everyone’s attention. Argue vehemently with a big and burly fellow about something he didn’t give a shit about. He’d barely remember what the topic was as he insulted their mother (their grandmother, their great-grandmother) and got too close for comfort. In the unlikely event he wasn’t punched in the face and tossed out on his ass, he’d pass out on the bar. The bruise colored dawn would find him sprawled in a back alley with a note written on his face: DON’T COME BACK. FUCKING MORON.

As if he would.

The repetition wasn’t soothing, but it scratched a perverse itch. To be out of control in a familiar way: the grooves in the record well worn. Akin to sliding into a comfy pair of shoes. The balls of his feet, his toes slid easily into the blackened depressions, the warm leather wrapped soft around his heels. With each listen, each stroll he’d notice variations and nuances. Sensations he hadn’t previously experienced.

It was better than the alternative. It was better than nothing.

*

Out of the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of mouse brown hair, frizzy and knotted, in dire need of conditioner. A pale, pale face with a cherry tomato tinge, like they'd been out in the sun recently, and their skin didn't like it. But what made him sit up and take notice were the bare feet: each nail a slightly different length and shape, dirt crusted under the ones that weren’t bruised. On the floor, a pair of red rubber galoshes.

He looked closer. They belonged to a girl. No, not a girl. A woman. She was that hazy age between mid-to-late twenties, but dressed like someone much, much younger. Like a little kid learning to dress herself who vehemently believed that more (patterns, colors, textures, shine) was better. She sported tinsel strewn, rainbow striped leg warmers, spandex bicycle shorts and a Christmas sweater complete with red-nosed reindeer. Olivia Newton John by way of Pippi Longstocking, completely unconcerned that on their own each look was hard to pull off, let alone in combination.

Her nonchalance was not faked. She did not desire to make a statement. She had not spent hours in front of a mirror perfecting this look. She’d pulled on her clothes while contemplating world peace or dwarf stars, while listening to the voices in her head. She was unconcerned and oblivious. Above it all.

“Hi, I’m Bob,” he said, hearty and overly familiar. Bob spent a lot of time in airports and strange towns, was always looking for new friends.

She turned her shoulders and torso. Her head and neck followed. She raised an eyebrow and took a half beat to consider her response. 

“Carolyn.” 

She offered her hand, and it hung between them, empty and demanding. So he clasped it. Her grip was firm, palm moist and sticky. Not the cleanest. She made eye contact without flinching. When she released him, she nodded once, with satisfaction. 

“Pleased to meet you, Carolyn. I’m new in town, here for only a few days. But if everything goes well, for longer.” 

Typically, he'd speedily weave into the conversation the tale of Bob's so-called life. There'd be a couple of laughs, followed by a couple of pearl-clutching thrills; a hint of self-satisfied ruefulness at his bad boy past _,_ an implicit promise to revisit the watered-down, quite safe version of it. If present company was amenable. 

There was something about her face, though.

When he introduced himself, none of the usual expressions flashed across it. Thinly veiled distaste. A practiced look of vague interest while she snuck peeks at her phone. Nervous apprehension that he was a creeper who, given the slightest glimpse of friendliness, wouldn’t leave her alone the rest of the night. Would follow her home. Instead, it was poised and quiet. Neutral and completely at odds with her farcical outfit. 

If pressed to assign words to what she was feeling, he would have chosen _amused._ And _anticipatory._ Rather like someone who, presented with a precocious toddler or a talking turtle, was open to seeing what it would do next. 

No matter how far he traveled, he met so few unusual people. No one who came close to rivaling himself and his siblings. 

“But enough about me. What do you do, Carolyn, around these parts?”

“I’m a librarian,” she said, in the tone of voice one might use when saying, “I’m the Pope.” Or, “I’m Reginald Hargreeves.” 

“Children’s literature?" he laughed. "Have I got some stories for you!”

“Foreign literature. You’d be amazed how many immigrants there are around these parts. They’re more comfortable, they’re happier reading in their first language.”

“Did you hear the one about the billionaire and the forty-two miracle babies? Each one from a different country. Proof, once again, that truth is stranger than fiction.” Bob liked to gossip, and Klaus liked to talk about himself in the third person.

“Nooo…I’m sorry,” she said with a smile, though she didn’t look or sound particularly sorry. “I’m more of a, how do you say it?” She paused and frowned. Scratched the wrinkle between her brows with a confetti painted fingernail, a badly done home manicure.

”I'm a person who doesn’t get out much.”

“A homebody? A shut-in?”

“No, that’s not it. That’s when someone is scared to leave the house, correct? I stay in my ce...in my _room_ because I really love learning. Some would say too much.”

“A bluestocking?”

“No, that’s not it either. But I like that word. Say it again.” 

He did and she nodded, slowly. Mouthed _Victorian era, intellectual women, blue knee length socks._

“I get it. Once a descriptive term, then derogatory - intellectual women were to be feared and derided. Similar to the French _bas bleu_. I should take ownership of it, make it mine, a badge of honor. But this is a word that describes someone who likes books so much she wants to burrow into them, live in them, if she could.”

“A…bookworm?”

“Yes!” She beamed. The toddler turtle had pleased his audience. A surge of happiness, entirely unexpected, rushed through him.

“But I’m usually too busy to keep up with all the news. Too many languages to learn.”

“You speak a lot of them?” The logical and required follow-up question. Bob had never shown such interest in others.

“For belief’s sake, let’s say I’m fluent in fifty languages. Spoken and written, historical and contemporary forms. You look surprised, but it’s not that difficult, once you get the first dozen under your belt." 

He snorted in disbelief: that this was possible, that people with such talent, assuming they existed which of course they did not, would choose to live in a place this bland. 

She solemnly nodded. "It's true. I'm not the first one to say it. The problem is, each time I think I’m finished, a new one pops up. A new dead language, a brand new language. Words are slippery. They never stay still. They want to evolve." At the very idea her eyes soften, turn inward and dreamy. "Sometimes words aren’t even words, just sounds or numbers or thoughts. Feelings or physical sensations or pictures. Inchoate longings. But when the pieces are strung together, the blocks are stacked and combined they build a language. And there’s not as much time as I’d like, though I have more than most.”

His jaded ears, his thoughtless brain immediately made a connection to Vanya, to a pose she regularly struck: absorbed in her violin and her books, above the grubby, petty concerns of the world. Her brothers’ and sister’s world. Not because, utterly lacking talent and _gift_ , she had no choice. Rather, because anonymity was what she craved. 

A lie. For years and years she had stoked grudges, could only bank the fire by sharing her childish revenge fantasies with the world: a disgorging of self-pity that displayed not a speck of self-awareness or humor. A book, the only one he’d read cover to cover - twice - that lacked both distance and self-deprecation, the leavening that made the pathos rise. 

Vanya never understood that.

He had forgiven her by that point, though at times it was hard to remember.

But what did he know about the mundanes, how the rest of the world lived their lives, what they chose to center them around. Maybe, in the wild, there really were that many tasty books and languages? Books and languages that were more companionable than people? More comforting than dope? 

Bob could have laughed and leaned a smidge closer. Quipped about library tables, the privacy to be found between the stacks, the collected works of the Marquis de Sade. He was headed there, though she was absolutely not his type. Perhaps followed up with the stilted Czech he'd picked up during an extended stint in Prague, before Dad became wise to his ways.

Then he saw the one next to her, and mousy Carolyn faded away.

Why didn’t he notice her before? Why wasn’t everyone in the bar staring at her, open-mouthed? 

She was insubstantial. Barely present. Papery flesh covered her bones, etiolated hair sprouted from her skull. Both were reminiscent of a shirt that had been run through the wash a couple hundred times. Once white or pink or beige, now an indeterminate color he’d call dust or ash. In keeping with the theme, she wore what he’d previously heard referred to as _sackcloth_. Until he saw her, he wasn’t sure exactly what the word meant. The fabric matched the rest of her; left exposed her arms and legs - criss-crossed in silvery scars, bright like mercury against her worm pale skin. They weren’t the scars you gave yourself. He was familiar with those. They were the ones given to you. Not from a workaday event: a bar fight started by making eyes at a cranked up biker’s sweetie. These were precise and deep, medical and purposeful. The kind of marks anyone with the slightest shred of sanity would try desperately hard to avoid being the recipient of.

More importantly, one Pencillin and one hundred milligrams of Seroquel deep, he saw the ghost of her standing next to her. Similarly colored, but where her counterpart was whittled away to her essence, like a piece of driftwood or a fossil, her ghost was soft and overripe. Stomach bloated with death gas, skin wrinkled and purpley, greyish black. Loose flesh hung in streamers from her arms and legs. He could have peeled it from her hands in one piece, like gloves. She was dressed differently, too: a cheerleader in a short, pleated skirt and crop top. Something ( _maggots many many maggots)_ writhed in her eye sockets, but he had resolutely stopped looking.

She - which one he wasn’t sure, perhaps both - stank like a corpse wrapped in linen and left raw under a tree, to become one with the earth. His bone-headed instinct was to breath deeper. He retched, tasted ginger syrup and beer nuts. The bare footed, clown suited one who sat next to him, _Carolyn_ he reminded himself, looked sharply his way.

“A peanut,” he gasped. “It went down the wrong way. If you could give me a moment.”

With a shrug Carolyn turned away, to watch and politely applaud a couple jitter-bugging in the space by the jukebox. He hazarded another look, over her shoulder. 

The ghost was still there.

Any other day he would have - not to put too fine a point on it and in no particular order - shouted _Fire!,_ shat his pants, thrown a drink in someone’s face and hightailed it out of the bar. But the duality was mesmerizing. She was not a ghost, yet she had a ghost. She wasn’t dead but had clearly, at some point in the near past, _been dead._ There was no other explanation for it. And he had always been a simple fellow. An Occam’s Razor, a what-you-see-is-what-you-get man. 

In his current state he shouldn't have seen it. Her. Them. He had spent years of organ damaging experimentation-cum-addiction ensuring a situation like this never happened. When it nevertheless did it was so unexpected, so peculiar and extraordinary that stoic acceptance replaced his typical, panicked response. And less passive feelings stirred. Ones he hadn’t felt in some time. Curiosity. Interest.

Of all the people currently speaking to him - of all the _ghosts_ , semantics at this particular moment when there was apparently no difference between one and the other - Ben would know what to make of this situation. Last time he checked, Ben was sitting on the bar, looking wistfully at the tequila bottles. 

He'd moved to the door, was shaking his head, walking through people entering and exiting, ignoring his impatient head twitches. 

_Come here! I need you!_

“No! No, Klaus. Absolutely not. We need to get out of here. Time to go. They’re bad news. You don’t understand. I know things you don't, but I don’t have time to explain.” 

Ben looked at the ghost. "Stop looking at me, please. Pretty please. I don't know anything. I'm a complete, useless nobody. I swear it."

He turned away from Ben and asked for another drink. “A double, if you don’t mind.” When he turned back, Ben was still by the door, still pouting and pacing.

"I mean it, Klaus! I'm leaving without you. This time, you're on your own."

Trust Ben to wet blanket his parade. These were the first not boring people he had met in he can’t remember how long. Besides, he reassured himself - because Ben was undoubtedly neurotic, but also not a fool - he had powers. Useless ones, but he knew people with real powers, people who weren’t afraid to use them. Who everyone else knew weren’t afraid to use them. Diego could be counted on to avenge him, and possibly to rescue him. Especially if he was having a bad day. 

Courage by association. That was him, in a nutshell. 

*

“Drusilla. She’s with you?”

A blank look. Of course, _bluestocking_. He should have led with Lady Macbeth. 

“On your left. The one with the pale hair and dark teeth. I’m looking straight at her.”

Carolyn infinitesimally tilted her head. He would have missed it, if not for Ben's warning. 

“Are you saying that, next to me, you see someone?” she asked, exceedingly gently.

“Of course. She's sitting on the stool next to you, feet on the bar, peeling scabs off her shins in impressively long strips. Do you know how she got those?” 

Silence while Carolyn, infinitesimally, straightened her head and placed a deliberating finger on her cheek. She looked at him. Not with disbelief; she didn’t blink or twitch. Not with curiosity; she didn’t turn. Not with irritation; she didn’t frown or curl a lip in disdain with this nosy stranger who wouldn’t stop talking, who refused to leave her alone. She looked at him with precision. Behind eyes that he suddenly understood, a knee to the balls a fist to his eye, had no emotion behind them. Not one that he recognized.

He cataloged the previous minutes: coolly calculating, a hint of girlish warmth, a business woman meeting a potential colleague at a networking event, an ingenuous philology nerd fluent in fifty languages but unfamiliar with run-of-the-mill English references. For a second, only a second mind you, he wondered if Ben had a point.

He scanned the bar, the unseeing patrons. “I’m not supposed to see her? In point of fact, I’m the only one, besides you, who _can_ see her.”

An up and down movement with her shoulders, more reflex than shrug. 

“I couldn’t say.”

More like she wouldn’t say, but he didn’t want to try to win a game of linguistic one-upmanship with a _foreign languages librarian._

He decided to follow her lead. To treat this situation as not irregular, but perfectly normal, albeit requiring a certain amount of discretion. “Your friend,” he said, keeping to a minimum the flapping hand gestures, the sighs and nervous eye-rolls.

“She’s not my friend. She’s my sister.” As if she expected him to protest, she immediately amended, “my adopted sister.” 

No matter who he was that night, Bob or Jerry or Dieter or Shlomo, no matter how pure his intent to stay away from the Academy, adoption was his cue to launch into the story of his instantaneous birth - the baby Jesus had nothing on him - and almost as expeditious purchase by Papa. He typically kept it fuzzy, just enough detail to make them wonder: _Could be it be? No way. Not a chance. Not here in Greenbrook!_

Occasionally, his companion was so caught up in their own story he’d have to drop a reference so obvious - “My dear sister Allison, an actress. We’re terribly close. I saw her just last week in Berlin. At the film festival...” - that even the frat boy on his other side, eavesdropping on their conversation while staring open-mouthed at the bartender’s breasts sat up, bought him a drink, and shared whatever drugs he had.

“I’m adopted too. My dad, a bit of a messiah complex that one, adopted seven of us in one swoop. There are five of us left.” 

“We’re twelve,” Carolyn nonchalantly one-upped him. “My father is also…religious.” 

She turned away again, to examine her sister with shark eyes. Her sister, who hadn't yet looked at her, let alone spoken to her.

Why wouldn't Carolyn talk to him, when her alternative was catatonia? Why didn't she see he was worth talking to? He put a finger on her arm. It was an entirely appropriate gesture, a light, short touch between shoulder and elbow. Not a muscle moved other than the ones in her neck, which she used to turn her head. His finger, still hovering over her sweater, began to burn from the inside out. 

"Ah!"

He poked the tip of his finger in his mouth and sucked on it. Checked it for blisters, there weren't any, before wrapping it around his damp glass.

Carolyn raised both eyebrows in a complete lack of concern.

"Are you okay?" 

"Why wouldn't I be?"

It would take more than burning skin to scare him off-topic. He planted both elbows on the bar and cupped his face in his hands.

“Do tell. What’s _her_ story? You might as well tell me," he said, with a practiced charm that six and a half times out of ten didn't fail him. "I am very persistent."

The odds were in his favor that night. Carolyn infinitesimally sighed. Her shoulders moved up and down.

"What you might expect. Drugs. Too much time in an altered state. Too boring to talk about, and you,” she said blithely, "seem to be familiar with the trajectory."

How rude. How reductionist.

“The state named Death,” the object of their conversation intoned, before he could verbalize his objections. “The Other Lands, a place where time passes differently. A minute here, a month there. Two months here, a lifetime there. It is where I spend most of my time. It is where I am...happiest?” A sepulchre with the power of speech.

He took a long sip of his drink. _Don’t blink, Klaus. They want to scare you, and you mustn’t give them the pleasure._

Carolyn flicked deadpan eyes at her companion - her _sister_ \- and huffed softly, stoically, with only the faintest whiff of irritation. Drummed her fingers on the bar as she considered her next words.

“Our family is close, very close," she elaborated. "There are months we don’t see each other, hear from each other, but we always come together again. Like now. We’re staying with a relative, an aunt we haven’t seen in some time. A bit of a reunion. She’s a fabulous cook; loves to feed us. But she, Margaret,” Carolyn off-handedly gestured, with a touch of contempt. As one would when the topic under discussion was the badly trained family pet. 

He felt a surge of defensiveness, of shame on Margaret’s behalf. She couldn't help being the way she was.  He smiled apologetically, empathetically at Margaret and her ghost. In unison, they bared mouthfuls of rotten teeth. Coal black tongues peeked through the broken bits. With their hands they told him to go fuck himself.

“You see what I mean. Margaret can be difficult to deal with. A bit intense. Unconcerned with social norms."

“Look how solemnly they dance, like their lives depended on it. If only they knew what was happening, right under their noses. What will happen to them all, if Father doesn't return,” Margaret giggled. 

Carolyn didn't miss a beat. "Everyone needs a break from her. And I, to be honest, needed a little break from them. Strong personalities, each one of us. And this place seemed nice. The design, the music…A lot of care has been put into it. I appreciate that.” 

“What’s keeping her…” there was a way to word the question, the opposite of how he’d naturally phrase it, that would continue rather than end the conversation, _think Klaus think_ , “from being seen by everyone who doesn’t want to see her,” he concluded, a warm glow that he’d found a way to talk around the issue. 

“She’s in a pocket dimension of sorts. She’s here, but she’s not here. There’s a bubble around her. Space? Time? Both? She can’t touch anyone, no one can touch her. Two of my brothers, twins, are good with this stuff. Physics,” she said, vaguely but matter-of-factly. 

He thought of Five, his equations and his brilliant brattiness, slipping through space and time, manipulating the very essence of his being. 

Carolyn tried to reassure him. “It’s not dangerous. It can’t hurt you, or anyone else.” 

“I smoke the bones of the dead. I grind them to dust, add brain matter, curdled intestinal milk and tongue chopped fine. I mix them into a paste. They take me everywhere I need to go. Tell me what I need to know."

“Father’s missing. No one but you sees me,” Margaret’s ghost giggled. “I can come out to play,” 

He couldn’t resist a sardonic eyebrow. “Perfectly safe? No need to worry?” 

Carolyn grinned, easy. “Don’t mind her babbling. Margaret made up her own language, when she was a kid. Sometimes she returns to it when she’s feeling out of her element. She’s harmless.” 

Singularly focused on maintaining the flow of conversation, he’d missed a crucial detail: Margaret and her ghost weren’t speaking the same language as Carolyn. They weren’t speaking English. Nor were they, come to think of it, speaking Mandarin, French, Spanish, Swahili, Russian, Kannada or Pig Latin. 

To his shock - not as much as one might expect: it had been a night chock full of bolts to the brain, he was growing inured to them - he registered that Margaret was speaking in a language similar to one he’d heard before. Only once, and long ago. When Dad took him, took the six of them to the British Museum. A reward after a mission that, all things considered, had resulted in minimal bloodshed. They had _acquitted themselves with distinction_ _._

Dad rubbed his hands together and crowed. _"_ A repeat customer! She said she'd be in touch!"

10 Downing Street, if you please. 

He stood in front of the panels of Assyria: Lion Hunt (Rm. 10a, 645-635 BC. _The hunt scenes, full of tension and realism, rank among the finest achievements of Assyrian Art. They depict the release of the lions, the ensuing chase and subsequent killing._ ) Only had eyes for the school group next to him, for a surfer type out of place in soggy, foggy London town. Tousled, long black hair, a hint of tattoo peeking out of his rolled up shirtsleeves. Brown skin and green eyes, holding himself like someone who had nothing to fear. He bit his lip and willed him to look at him, but he didn't notice, was doing the same to the ebony skinned, high cheek boned girl across the room. She had a shaved head, a pierced nose, and a bone structure he’d kill someone for. A lazy, warm confidence that wasn’t faked and that he knew, even then, he couldn’t ever hope to possess. 

And the lions _roared._

It was the first time he’d heard that particular sound. There was no mistaking it for anything else.

At this point in his education, he had developed enough control to casually, cautiously glance at the panels. The lions gazed directly at him. The ones with spears sticking out of them complained. Vociferously. The ones with arms or legs in their mouths growled and purred victory songs. They were joined by the humans - the hunters, the hunted. He heard howls of triumph, pleas for mercy and a quick death, curses this was their fate. They stared at him, begged him to intervene. As if he, twenty five hundred years in the future, could do anything for them other than shrug and mouth _Sorry!_

And there was Dad’s sharp, watchful face.

“But I understand her. I understand both of them.” 

He didn’t intend to say the words out loud, but he was lost in memory. Wasn’t used to being such an active listener, such a prudent conversationalist. He’d glugged down his _make it a double_ while Carolyn stirred a finger through her tall, fizzy drink, pausing occasionally to remove it from her glass and lick the tip in a way that was more attractive than it should have been.

A collected, dispassionate pause. The jukebox ticked over to a New Orleans jazz band version of Rattlin’ Bones. Entirely appropriate. It was carnival season and someone was lonely and longing for home, but he no longer believed in coincidences. Margaret cocked her head and languorously swayed her scarred arms. He watched, fascinated. They didn't slip ghost style through her neighbors, busy with their own conversations, oblivious to the unfolding lunacy. Her arms, even as she sat inches - _centimeters_ away from them were always in a different place than another human being. 

Whoever these twins were, they did good work.

“That’s interesting,” Carolyn said lightly, as the final notes drifted into space. “Did you say you can understand her? Did you say there was more than one of her here? That I cannot see?” 

No reaction from Margaret. Had she heard him, understood his words, comprehended their meaning, felt they were relevant to her? Unclear. But sitting on the bar across from him, stretching and releasing her arm flaps, watching them sway back and forth, the ghost chortled.

"Yes, yes. Tell her. Let's see what she says." 

Since Carolyn finally _asked._ He started from the top. He liked to build suspense into a story, bring his audience along, when Margaret interrupted. 

“Not your catalog,” she sing-songed. “I’ll tell David. You know how cross he gets, when people act as they shouldn't. ”

As suddenly as she showed interest, Carolyn retired from the conversation.A moment ago he wasn't frightened of her, but he wasn't comfortable either. Her focused intelligence, her spritely, manic energy - rather like a porpoise - had him off-balance, groping for a handhold. Now, she was deliberately dull. She was amphibian: squashy and still, hiding in the mud. Except for her right ring finger, covered by her left hand. It ticced spasmodically, a broken metronome.

He followed her lead and snapped shut his mouth, even as his brain shouted a litany of questions. _Who is David? There's more than one catalog? Was Margaret also a librarian? Were there encyclopedias of dead people that she was in charge of, enough to need her own catalog? Who, these days, referred to them as catalogs? Why, at this moment, was he thinking about books?_

Finally the center of serious attention, six expectant eyes on her, Margaret slithered on top of the bar, next to her shade. She hooked one knee over the other; flashed dessicated, scabby thighs his way. Daintily arranged her colorless hemp around her.

“You. You’re different than I am. They’re all around you, talking to you. But you don’t have to die first. Neatly butchered, spit and tied, a swift cut from ear to ear. Placed in the earth between the roots and worms, breathing, waiting, listening to the bones. Instead they surround you, ask to be heard, beg for you to listen. They come to you in your dreams. They need you; need you to give them being. Beingness. But you ignore them. You laugh at them. You mock their pain. You run away. You cry and cry."

Her voice was creaky and monotonous. Affectless, like someone who hadn’t spoken in eons. Like Penamunnebnesuttawy, the mummy of a Priest of Amun and Bastet that Dad demanded he try to communicate with. After that, it was the Yaxchilan Lintels.

Instead, he used a party of boisterous Italian middle schoolers - lounging on the stairs, sitting on the sarcophagi, taking selfies with the pharoahs, whipping the museum guards into a frenzy - to slip away. He didn’t care that the Mayans were renowned astronomers; that they put the Romans and Egyptians to shame with their sophisticated grasp of mathematics. That they engineered marvelous suspension bridges, aqueducts and roads, were artistic and architectural sophisticates and that Shield Jaguar II and his wife, Lady K'ab'al Xook in all likelihood had incredibly fascinating information to share with him, with Dad. Ropes of thorns pulled through the tongue impeded one's ability to speak. And blood made him nauseous.

“You can’t sleep. You're destroying yourself. Need more and more and more to keep them away. After a few minutes, there they are again. You see the other side, what no one can. Jars placed end to end in an immense field. Miles and miles of them and each one holds a life, a story. Wisdom and power. But you'd rather poke your own eyes out than look at them.”

Once more, he looked for Ben. Much as it pained him to admit it, Ben had a point? If he admitted this to him, if he groveled, perhaps Ben would come to his rescue? But no. He was true to his word. He'd _abandoned him_ , the coward, not a flicker to be seen. 

He scanned the rest of the bar for an open seat, one far away from these freaky ladies. He took road-trips to get away from these dynamics: weird sisters, sad and scary siblings, daddy issues. Two seats had opened up, at the far end. Margaret was still talking - something about an additional sister and her fear of her powers. The ghost and Carolyn watched her with varying levels of interest. 

This was his chance, _sidle sidle,_ to slip away without being noticed. He shifted one ass cheek off his stool, placed one foot on the floor. When no one reacted, he moved both back into place.

Soliloquy finished, Margaret drifted off, legs and arms splayed, a marionette whose strings had been cut. Like a balloon, her ghostly shadow - eyes also closed, chin resting on her chest, rose a few inches in the air and bobbed next to her. Carolyn's face was a pond on a sunny, windless day. She sat up very straight and squared her shoulders. Spread her hands across the bar, ample space between each finger, only the tips of her thumbs touching. She stretched them longer and wider, let them go slack. Rinse and repeat.

The music coming from the jukebox had receded far into the distance. He was both drunk and high, the only part of the evening that had gone according to plan. On the verge of leaving this plane of existence for a merciful few hours, but a bloody-minded section of his brain had other ideas. It kicked him and shouted _Klaus, not yet! She has something to tell you!_

“I can see why Margaret's not a favorite sibling."

“There are no favorites. We’re all our Father’s children.” A rote, ridiculous response, but said with not the slightest trace of irony. 

“So you’re…Mormons?” The only answer that made sense to him. 

He hoped she’d burst into giggles. Instead, the half-beat too long to respond. 

“Why do you say that?” 

The cool as a cucumber, controlled response.

“The passel of kids. The frowning upon illegal substances. The fact that you’re here in a bar, drinking a tonic water.” 

“No. We're not Mormons. Margaret was talking about one of my other sisters who smokes a lot of pot. Constantly, from when she wakes up until when she goes to sleep; then again the next day and the day after that. Once in a while, why not? I certainly do. But Jennifer, she can’t stop. It helps her cope with what is asked of her. It makes her soft.” 

She performed a moue of distaste. “It’s too bad. She’s a very gifted healer. Very powerful. To save lives, not take them. It's something to be proud of, to cherish.” 

“I don’t know. A person’s got to do what she’s got to do.”

“How’s that working for you, _Bob?_ You seem like you have your shit together. Hanging out in random bars, hitting up strangers for company. Unable to decide whether you want them to believe your lies or figure out that you used to be someone special.” 

Despite the acid that had suddenly corroded her voice, he waited for her to ask him about his power, about the ghost. After all, the tattle-tale, David's  girl, was asleep. Now was their chance.

But Carolyn didn’t. She rubbed her eyes and sighed; asked the bartender for the time. She had worked out what she needed to and was uninterested in the rest; or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that she had dismissed him as too mediocre, weak and spineless, too lacking in backbone and initiative. He was nowhere near the level of Jennifer and her gift. Her stoner sister was barely worth Carolyn's regard. Why would she waste her time, risk the wrath of David to talk to _him_? 

“Clearly, you are a superior human being and have coping mechanisms that I do not."

And having deemed him harmless, useless, pointless: a secret smile.

“Indeed.”

She touched Margaret’s hand ever so deliberately, ever so lightly, contact she willed herself to make. 

“Time to go, Margaret. Everyone should be asleep.” 

Margaret’s eyes slit open. Her ghost blinked sleepily and stretched, exposed protruding ribs and a belly button that yawned across her bloated stomach. 

“Except David,” Margaret hummed. “He’s going to break my fingers, one by one. He promised.”

“That sounds lovely, but quietly, ok? You don’t want to wake the others tonight, you promised.”

They’re leaving? A minute ago he wanted them to, but not any more. They were having a conversation, but no _information_ had been exchanged. They had been warming up, getting to know each other. And yes, Carolyn was uninterested in him, but he did not share her indifference. 

_Who are they? Why are they? What are they? How are they?_

_What does it mean for him?_

“What’s my alternative, then, oh wise one? To stop _being weak_ and end up like Margaret? Only able to leave the house under a glamour? Barely existing, talking to myself in a corner, more smell than substance? Tearing off chunks of myself for others’ amusement? Having questionable relations with my psychotic siblings?” 

“That’s up to you. You control them, your power, your ghosts. Or you let them control you. It’s a matter of will, mind over matter. You can come to peace with your life, your decisions, your role in this world. With what you need to do, what you’ve been asked to do. Or, you can stick your head in the sand and pretend your life isn’t actually your life. It’s all a bad dream. Some might argue that’s a viable option, if you’re able to. We,” and with a sweep of her hand she includes Margaret, “never had a choice.”

Isn’t that something dear old dad would say. She must have seen it, his contempt, his anger. Margaret ducked her head to do something one doesn’t do in a bar - lick the crumbs off the counter; get very, very close to the bartender’s face; stick her hand up her vagina, pull it out and sniff her fingers - and Carolyn flashed him a look of pure, unadulterated rage that should have melted his face. Contained, but once released, an inferno. Not a pond but a nuclear disaster. Before he could squeak for Ben it was gone. She was once more bland as vanilla pudding, as oily and smooth as a tub of butter. 

But he was transformed, hollowed out, nothing more than particles of smoke. If she passed a hand through him she'd completely disperse his form. 

“Father always killed me the best,” Margaret said dreamily. “Even better than David. But it’s been so long. And never slow roasted in the bull. The screaming, the smell, the hours and hours and hours of delicious torment. That is only for his favorites. He has them, Carolyn's being coy because she’s one of them.” 

It was time to admit he was never in control of this conversation. The ghost made soft, sizzing noises, fat burning on the grill. He gaped at her, both of them, all three of them. They grinned - with amusement, pleasure and pity. Margaret leaned closer and closer, until he was forced to recoil from her hot stink. 

“If you don’t listen, you can be like me, a thousand deaths, all different. If you put them off for much longer they will come for you, however they can.”

They walked out the door without a backwards glance. Minutes later Ben slunk back, abashed but unashamed, and informed him that he watched them leave. Carolyn carried her galoshes in her hand. They walked up the uneven stairs, waited for the walk signal to change and crossed the street. They meandered along the sidewalk like regular people, until they were out of sight. No brooms or spaceships or dragons. No puff of smoke or hole opening up in the ground to swallow them down and home. 

The next morning, when he woke up propped against a dumpster in the alley with a raging headache, still stoned, a note thoughtfully placed on his lap, written in black script on cream colored stationery, he decided it was all a bad dream. He mentioned it to Ben, who didn’t disagree. 

After that night, road trips were never the same. After that night, he avoided suburbia. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Rm. 10a, 645-635 BC. _The hunt scenes, full of tension and realism, rank among the finest achievements of Assyrian Art. They depict the release of the lions, the ensuing chase and subsequent killing.)_
> 
> This comes directly from the British Museum website. And yes, everything mentioned in this story can be seen there.
> 
> The song _Rattlin' Bones_ is by the Preservation Hall Jazz Band.


	3. roger bevins iii

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With deepest, most abject apologies to George Saunders. I couldn't convince this story to go away.
> 
> The events of _Lincoln in the Bardo_ take place on a single evening in late February 1862, after the death of Abraham Lincoln's son Willie. The novel is about many things, including ghosts, the Civil War, forgiveness and coming to terms with mortality: your own and others. As such, any story crossed with it is likely to include these elements; this one is no exception. While I would tag this chapter as light angst, death in many forms is central to it.  
> 
> 
> The content warning contains spoilers. It is in the end notes.
> 
> The formatting of the chapter follows that of the novel.

Oh my. That is to say.

Hello!

I didn’t see you, standing so close. If it wasn't for your breath on the back of my neck, quite distinctive: like low tide in Galveston after an oil spill; or a Bombay butcher’s shop on a steamy afternoon, before the monsoon breaks, I’m not sure I would have noticed you.

Did I step on your shoes? My apologies. They’re very shiny. 

I arrived only recently to these beautiful, these positively luscious environs. This is my second stroll through these magnificent, these tremendously splendid grounds. Quite possibly my fifth. My twelfth? It’s been hard to keep track of the passing hours.

Here, more than time is different. _I_ feel different: off-balance, out-of-sync. Stretched thin, rolled thin. Two-dimensional and weightless. I haven’t been treading on the earth so much as floating above it. Skimming? Walk-skimming, to be precise. Soaking in the views, as much of them as I can see in this watery moonlight. Reaching towards…infinity?

Is it always this dim, this gloomy here, wherever _here_ is? Ah! I see that you know. But you’d rather I learn for myself, come to my own conclusions. A puzzle, then.

I don’t particularly care for puzzles. They require so much patience, so much strategic and focused thought.

What have I observed? A grey stone chapel, covered in ivy. A red chapel, embellished with cunning circular windows. Piously imposing statues – a plethora of bent heads - and two-tiered fountains that gracefully cascade, even when the sun has dipped below the horizon.

(I believe it has been some time, possibly days, since I have seen the sun rise. Or set.)

The paths are extensive: paved and winding, smooth and well maintained. The grass feels green and lush, under my boots. There is a sturdy iron fence surrounding the property, approximately six feet in height. Whoever lives here must be quite important.

There is a great, a very great deal of marble and granite: white and pink, black and grey; planed smooth, a multitude of forms. I see rounded edges, square edges, more than a few crumbling edges. Short stones and medium stones. Tall stones, rising to points, shaped into obelisks: protuberant, quite phallic.

Some are crowded close together, others set further apart. I see words. A small number are freshly chiseled. Others are faded; still others are blurred beyond recognition, subsumed into the stone that birthed them.

There are names, dates. Elspeth Cummings, September 1801-February 1802 ( _oh dear_ ). Jonathan Richman, February 1777-July 1860 ( _much better_ ). Epita…invocations, acknowledgements. Beloved daughter. Devoted son, husband and father.

Are we in an institution of higher learning, and these are a list of graduates? Of benefactors! 

The mau…the little houses: stately. A few of them a tad excessive. Needlessly ostentatious. In my experience, no matter how they look on the outside, the insides are uniformly uncomfortable. Drafty, prone to retaining the cold and damp. Extremely, utterly dark when the doors, impossible to open from the inside, are slammed shut. I see that you agree with me and, as I do, prefer the fresh, outdoor air. So invigorating. Life affirming. 

Could it be that we are in a nursing home of sorts? Though you don’t look especially old. Perhaps a convalescent home? A sanitarium! For those of a sensitive nature. A prison? One of those new-fangled, post-modern institutions focused on _rehabilitation_. That would explain the stones: imperative to provide the inmates with a vocation. 

I almost forgot to mention the creatures with the wings! So many of them! I was examining a particularly large specimen, got too close and scraped my forehead along a serrated edge. I might have shrieked in terror. What a relief when I saw it was an angel, standing guard. 

A Catholic prison?

Why are you shaking your head? I’ve said something inappropriate, haven’t I? Don’t be offended, kind sir. It is the first time this evening, but certainly not the last, I will say something insufferably unsuitable and garrulously gauche.

Since I’ve already f—ed up, like the g-d d—n f——ing a——hole I am, let us dispense with the formalities, discuss what I saw by the fence. A little girl, I would estimate her age at no more than ten years.

In the beginning she looked like a girl, but I blinked and she was a fruitcake. A literal one: sticky and glistening, the width and breadth of an encyclopedia. In the process of being consumed by a Baba Yaga type: pendulous breasts, a nose only rivaled by her chin, nails as long as rulers. I blinked again and she was a dog that reached nearly to my waist. All teeth, slobber and dark, thick fur: like the ones you read about in Victorian whodunits. Another blink and she was a vulture! My first in-person sighting. Then a trampled field of corn. As someone who avoids the country at all costs I shouldn’t easily identify one, but I’ve recently spent time on the farm. Suffice it to say it brought back memories I’d prefer to forget.

Saving the worst for last, she transformed into an _umbrella ripped open by a wind I could not feel_. Sir, you will forgive me for saying this. To be sure, the girl is young. It is neither fair nor just to judge her as an adult, to view her sins as permanent. Endemic and unsolvable. But she is malevolent. You must trust me, I have experience with these matters. She wanted to send me a message, one I did not need to hear. I do not like her, I do not like her one bit. 

\- klaus hargreeves

You have not seen the worst. Elise, Miss Traynor, has manifested as a smoking wreck of a rail car; the charred and expiring individuals trapped within her barking out the most obscene demands as her ‘wheels’ turned mercilessly upon several hogs who possessed human faces and voices, cried out most piteously as the wheels turned and crushed and re-crushed them, giving off the smell of burning pork. 

It has been some time since I've had the pleasure of consuming it, but she, poor thing, has rather turned me off all forms of swine.

\- roger bevins iii

And train travel?

\- klaus hargreeves

One gets used to her presence. Quite harmless, I assure you, to everyone but herself. This place is much less suited to children than adults. 

Though my guilt, for not helping her more in her time of need, it weighs me down. Here, regret is a constant, even as it impedes recovery. 

(The new arrival has a confiding face.) 

But enough about Miss Traynor. You, your story, are less familiar to me.

\- roger bevins iii

How did I arrive? I’m puzzling it out. A wrong turn in Albuquerque, hieing right when I should have hared left, zigging when I should have zagged. And here I am. Once again, outside my own time.

You seem confused, friend. Though it is difficult to make out with any precision what you are thinking. Your multiple noses, your flapping ears and bulging eyes, growing and shrinking, multiplying and dividing, moving extraordinarily quickly: all directions at once. They are, I suspect, rather distracting: to you as well as to me. Those dozen hands, constantly touching each other, touching your torso and face, grasping at the air. The deep, horizontal slashes on your many wrists…

That must have hurt a great deal. But you are better, now? You’ve had an opportunity to rest, to heal?

Excellent.

Returning to your question, I had a suitcase. Not just any suitcase: paste and board and, if you’re lucky, a couple of hinges with a strap to hold it together. It is a machine disguised as one. A wondrous machine. It moves, tumbles whoever holds it back and forth in time.

Your many eyes, dangling from your sockets like Christmas lights, like cherry tomatoes on the vine, are skeptical. They have a right to be.

Nevertheless, it is true. These clothes: the sky blue trousers, baggy and itchy but with convenient pockets; the darker blue coat of sackcloth, equally ill-fitting; the floppy hat. I don’t wear them because I should. Because it is my duty to my country or I wish to fight for long overdue justice, Because I'm a credulous bumpkin who doesn't understand the horrors of war, believed I was signing up for a grand old adventure: a chance to escape the drudgery of the farm, the boots of Pa and the disappointment of Ma. I wear them because I am from decades, a century and a half into the future. A future I wouldn’t know how to describe to you. 

I hoped to use the machine to find Dave again. Who is Dave, you ask? He is a beautiful man, the love of my life, the only person I have ever loved more than myself. He is everything I am not: handsome, strong, noble, brave, valiant and kind. Yet he loves me. I do not know why. Perhaps it is my superior cock-sucking abilities.

I’ve spoken too directly. Once again, I’ve offended you.

No?

Ah!

It is not that you are offended, but that you are envious? _Wistful._ I understand, say no more. 

To shorten a long story, albeit a tragic, mesmerizing one that has everyone reaching for their hankies, much like cutting down Romeo and Juliet to the Cliff’s Note’s version: they fuck, they die, it’s all dad’s fault! Dave is no longer with me.

\- klaus hargreeves

He, your Dave, is sick or injured? Recovering, and shortly you will be reunited? 

\- roger bevins iii

He is dead, he died in my arms. I pressed my hand against his flesh, into his flesh, trying to keep his insides from spilling onto the ground. I failed. I failed, then took the coward’s way out. Retreated from the battle, abandoned my comrades, turned on the machine in a box, ass-over-tea-kettled my way back home to 2018. In the nick of time. My siblings, I have six of them - indeed, I am deeply fortunate, family is everything - wanted my help to save the world from complete and utter destruction. Yes, it will happen. The world will end in fire. Do not worry, it will not happen tomorrow. It will not happen for some time. It will never happen if we can stop it, and perhaps we will. Either way, everyone will be equally damned or equally saved. It will be over in an instant.

You clasp your many, many hands together. Your many, many noses twitch with fear and excitement, and your many, many eyes gleam with pleasure that you have met someone of such distinction. 

Let me be honest. My siblings did not ask for my help to save the world. My siblings specifically told me they did not want my help saving the world. They told me to mind my own business; to leave the very important and absolutely essential business of world saving to the experts. Even if all they are expert at is setting themselves ablaze, then asking, “My goodness! Is that a barbecue? What’s for dinner?”

“F--k you,” I replied. Or, if you’d prefer, “Tarra! Cheerio! Good luck chaps!” 

Once again I abandoned Maison Umbrella Academy. Without a word I left all of them.

I left Ben. 

I decided to use the machine in the box to return to the time and place I would be most useful: 1970. I would save Dave's life, stop him from being killed. If I survived, I would live the rest of my life engaged in behavior some might deem selfish, solipsistic, narcissistic and ostrich-like, but I would label blissful and richly deserved. We talked about San Francisco and New York, London or Paris. A ranch in Montana. I’ve always fancied a man who can ride a horse. From your look of disinterest, a more noteworthy skill in my time than yours. 

Unfortunately, I skipped back a few too many pages and ended up in the midst of a different battle. A slow, slow march. A stream crossing near a church; nothing as fine as what we have here, more of a well constructed shack in a clearing shorn of trees. Spectators with picnic baskets cheered us forward. To say we were singing would be an exaggeration; but we were confident.

To start.

The end was more dejected: a bridge destroyed, a mad dash for safety. We cursed the fleeing spectators who jammed the sodden paths. All of us - soldier and citizen, horse and human - wallowed in the mud. I remember a horse bolting and kicking. Tripping over this g-d d--- coat, landing face first in the muck. I heard a hysterical whinny, possibly mine. Saw a blinding white light. Without further I ado was brought here, put in a most uncomfortable bed that I am forced to share with someone stiff and silent, though it is too dark to get a good look at him, in a most interesting...

\- klaus hargreeves 

_Hospital_. The sick beds, as you say, could be much improved upon. 

\- roger bevins iii

Indeed! Where are the nurses, to change the soiled bed-linens? To provide any linens.

I think there is something in my bed, round and brown, that shouldn’t be there, if you know what I’m saying?

\- klaus hargreeves

Freshly sick bodies have a tendency to…pop. When you saw the bright light, did you tense up. Cry? That encourages the… expulsion.

\- roger bevins iii

I try to avoid crying. Tears are so optimistic, aren’t they?

\- klaus hargreeves

To myself I will admit he is...intriguing. His wild eyes and beaky nose. His tendrils of mustache and grease-slickened hair. His body: scrawny and wasted. Plucked. Very different from my Gilbert with his delicate features, his white blond hair and deep blue eyes, gazing into them like falling into the sky. Gilbert filled out his trousers so admirably. His thighs, the way they held me down, took charge, that afternoon in the barn, under the grey horse blanket... 

My mother keeps chickens. A fresh egg, warm from the hen. Butter, silky and freshly churned, tasting faintly of grass. The heady smells of baking bread. Tastes promised me by Gilbert. Not one of him, but all of him. Along with other, equally fleeting pleasures. As they crouch-surround me, edge close but never touch.

Perpetual motion, those chickens. Skittish, necks bobbing up and down, forward and backward. Never allowed too close; ample distance between I and them. The projection, the illusion of docility, of lack of survival instincts is present. But living things wish to carry on living, even if it takes them a moment or two to realize it. Even if they sometimes only realize it after behaving impetuously, heedlessly. A passing notion goaded into action by misdirected love and thwarted desire; by the fervent, foolish foolish belief there is only one person in the world for you. If not him, then who? No one. 

Mercifully, not irreparable action.

No. Not irreparable. 

I do not listen, I pay no mind to what the Gilberts tell me: that I am much sicker than I let on. Though they have been telling me variations of this same story for many years.

A great many.

\- roger bevins iii

Now come one, come all to this tragic affair  
Wipe off that makeup, what's in is despair  
So throw on the black dress, mix in with the lot  
You might wake up and notice you're someone you're not

\- klaus hargreeves

Covered top to toe in a sheet as red as a summer tomato, holes where his eyes should be, the new arrival flickers in and out of sight. He sings songs I am unfamiliar with.

\- roger bevins iii

  
I want to write a new beginning  
Let go of the ghosts  
Let dreams and hopes lay  
And give our love another try  
  


\- klaus hargreeves

He whips through summer green branches, unwilling to exercise even a smidgen of control. He is careless of his words, uncaring that he _passes through._

Now I see coarse brown hair and a mask of rubber: bleached and riddled with cracks, like the earth after a month of no rain. Again, black holes where eyes should be. A bloody butcher knife and a slash for lips, a one piece suit of heavy blue cotton. He treads heavy; is terribly silent.

(I rather prefer him singing.) 

Now one I recognize: the Ghost of Christmas Past. A woman – or perhaps a man – in white robes. From the top of the head shoots a clear jet of light. It morphs: being now a thing with one arm, now with one leg, now with twenty legs, now a pair of legs without a head, now a head without a body. Parts dissolving.

Like one of us. Like me.

\- roger bevins iii

Roger Bevins has told me, warned me what is to come, _who_ is to come. Dreadful, awful things. The desires of one's dearest heart. They will tempt me to abandon this hospital to pursue...

\- klaus hargreeves

Alternative treatment.

\- roger bevins iii

He has described music unearthly in its beauty, radiant light one only sees in dreams. Fruit responsive to one's wishing. A joyful provocation of rose petals: red, pink, yellow, white, purple. Clear, striped and rainbow. Gold, literal actual gold: redolent with memories. Happy ones.

He is regularly presented with a bevy, a harem of his Gilbert. Lissome and full of promises.

He is afraid. I am not. Why should the prospect of flowers, of riches, of good memories (even I have a handful), of my own conga line of beloveds frighten me? So I wait. To see my Dave. One, six, twelve. A baker’s dozen. I am ready. I am not sure what I will do with him. With them. But I am ready. I am ready to talk to him, listen to him, go with him. To see what lies beyond this place.

\- klaus hargreeves

And it begins. The Gilberts, today there are four of them, move towards me with great purpose; along with the usual, additional enticements.

I wish I could say I was happy to see them. 

\- roger bevins iii

A burst of music, like what you'd hear at a convention of goth druids. An insistent, hip-shaking drum beat, the pulse of the earth. A perky wooden flute, a sparrow flitting from bush to branch. A medieval pipe organ: wheezing, shuffling inexorably closer. The trees are on the move.

Ah s---

F---.

_No no no no no no no._

Not Dave, nary a single one.

Instead.

I see _them_. Hargreeves, in their uniforms. Not the ones we settled on, but the prior ones, the experiments. Mom and Pogo Super-Momed, Spider-Peopled, X-Teamed us into existence. Imagine a montage of motley jester costumes: The six of us repeatedly popping out from behind a door - _Ta da!_ \- only to be met with Dad's huffs and huffs, too outraged to puff. Until we began to hope he might fill himself with enough hot air to float away.

What we learned, after a great deal of trial and error. It really is all about the mask. Half Batman, half Venice Carnival.

At first we used hi-tech fabric meant to camouflage us, no matter our surroundings. But the tell-tale shimmer gave us away. A flash of white in the piney under-growth. In the end, we settled for something bland, utilitarian and cheerless.

“Klaus,” Allison comforted, “there are better words than _lugubrious_ to describe our uniforms. How about classic; or understated, subtle, timeless. So our actions can shine.”

So as not to detract from the man in front of the curtain. Beaming. Rosewood cane, silver handle polished to a brilliant shine. A seventeen thousand dollar bespoke suit. Grey cashmere with thin lavender stripes. Boots of the softest glove leather. A cravat for f---’s sake.

\- klaus hargreeves

A gentleman of good taste.

\- roger bevins iii

Nothing gentle about him.

\- klaus hargreeves

A taskmaster. My own was more befuddled than patriarchal. Though on the matter of my _predilection_ he could quite percussive, basso in his questioning.

\- roger bevins iii

Evens are on one side. Odds, including Vanya, on the other. A space in the middle. They spread inviting arms, palms open. A see-sawing cello wobbles to nose-bleed heights. 

"Klaus, our dearest brother," they yodel. "We cannot do without you. We are incomplete without you. Where we abide, where we will take you, victory will always be ours. Will be yours."

They will not tell me where they reside, where this victory will take place. How we will triumph. _Who_ will we triumph over? I ask and I ask, but all I receive is, "We are incomplete without you. Victory will be ours, will be yours. Come with us, come with us." Suspiciously like a skipping record. Or an automated message at a pawn shop where the manager has fled with all the goods.

\- klaus hargreeves

They are not what you expected? You are thinking, perhaps, about the past, the future? Your actions then and when.

I ask these questions to the new arrival.

It is good to have someone fresh to focus on, with tribulations that do not belong to me. It helps me to stay strong. 

\- roger bevins iii

I am thinking about the moment, living in it. Not taking it - my life - for granted.

Before, the days bled into each other. One much the same as the next. Variety brought by pill vs powder, needle vs nose, inhale or inject.

But looking back, there was more that I could have strove for; more that I, in my own way, could have appreciated and accomplished.

I understand that now. When I get better, I will do better. 

\- klaus hargreeves

Gilberts crouch-surround me, close but never touching. They offer me jewel toned fruit dripping with crimson juice. Garlanding their necks are polka-dotted flowers strung together with horse hair. 

I nod at the new arrival: in sympathy, in agreement. I raise an eyebrow: in question, in encouragement. Underneath my perpetually shifting protuberances my expressions say: _Please continue._

\- roger bevins iii

What do I miss? Well, there’s the…cuddliness, the cuteness of kittens and bunnies. The warmth and light of sunsets and sunrises. The flowery smells of…flowers.

What will I do? Be nicer. To everyone. Do fewer drugs. Or even no drugs. Is that important? Listen to my father; or in the absence of a father, to a reasonable paternal substitute. Since I don't have one, I will find one! 

\- klaus hargreeves

I might have a made a noise – only the faintest, terribly discreet, quite possible to confuse for a sneeze - of disparagement. Of disappointment and disbelief. 

\- roger bevins iii

Too generic, your expressions say. Not enough soul.

What do I miss the most? Look forward to returning to, once I recover.

Well…how about the feel of Dave’s hands his lips moving up and down my back, calluses and chapped lips snagging my skin like it’s made of silk. Or silky salt water against my bare skin, the summer Mom insisted we spend a Dad-less two weeks at the shore. I look ahead, see nothing but ocean and sky and sun; hear nothing but the lap gurgle slap of the waves. It smells like peace, like freedom.

I turn a corner in a familiar city and see something completely unexpected: a komodo dragon basking on a sun-warmed stoop, a set of quintuplets with matching balloons, a Halloween parade in April. 

Emotions! Not only the good ones: excitement, anticipation, satisfaction; but the bad ones too: dread, humiliation and inadequacy. I want to experience them not remember them, each time I pull them out more faded than before. An echo in a deep well, bouncing back to me across a mile wide canyon. A copy of a copy. A picture of a picture of a picture. A concert taped on someone’s phone that I watch, pretend I was there. 

The tension and release of a good orgasm! Of a well formed bowel movement after days of constipation. The sound your fist makes when it makes contact with someone’s face. Vice versa also has its joys.

The fat off a crispy piece of bacon, or a medium rare Wagyu fillet. Baby carrots, tiny raspberries dusty from Pogo’s garden. Tasting of sunshine and dirt. Mom’s mousse au chocolat. Her Chantilly cream laced with bourbon.

The first drag of the first cigarette. The first sip of the Chateau D’Yquem snuck from Dad’s cellar, shared with Allison up in her and Luther’s aborted love nest. How much I love the world when the morphine kicks in.

Music. Oh my stars. Music. Not heavenly dirges, but dark and stormy tunes. A good storm, that washes away the bullshit; leaves everything clean and new. Music with a beat, pounding and pounding. A wordless voice: a crack of lightening, a grumble of thunder that cuts through the rain. I'm in a cavernous, echoing space. It’s darkest dark, the doors are sealed, and all I hear is noise. It doesn’t matter because I'm surrounded by bodies. Bodies with heartbeats, with arms and legs that don’t pass through me, with sweat and tears and boners and one is jammed against my ass and the other my crotch. I'm moving and moving and moving. There isn’t anything that could possibly go wrong until the morning. 

\- klaus hargreeves

I like to think of loon-call in the dark; calf-cramp in the spring; neck-rub in the parlor; milk-sip at end of day.

Yes, yes, yes. I see you, Gilberts One, Two, Three and Four. One moment, please.

A gaggle of children trudging through a side-blown December flurry; a friendly match-share beneath some collision-tilted streetlight. 

\- roger bevins iii

Dusk-fallen neon lights. Slick-tight washed-leather against unwashed skin. Heel-click on lamp-lit cobblestone. Midnight slice of pizza not-too-hot. Five a.m. drowning in bass thump and grind. Kohl-smudged eyes day-dazzled. Nine a.m. bodega egg and cheese. 

\- klaus hargreeves

...a frozen clock, bird-visited within its high tower; cold water from a tin jug; toweling off one’s clinging shirt post-June rain.

\- roger bevins iii

Will someone not listen to me! I’m not an idiot! I see what this place is. Know what happened to me. I know I’m dead.

That’s right. I said it. F--- you. I said it.

Master Bevins, don't look at me like that: shocked and dismayed, Roger Rabbiting. You know it as well as I do - better than! And you, you shameless crowd of dead ones over there, by the latest fresh dug _grave_. We haven't been introduced; but I recognize you, know all about you. Stop rubbernecking. This doesn't concern you. 

I don’t have to like it.

Let me be clear. I cannot be dead. I cannot be a _ghost_. How did I end up here? I wasn’t the only one to die that day, where are the others? Why me?

I have so much work left to do! Unfinished, essential work. My life’s work, my life’s purpose! True, I’ve avoided it for most of my life. When I wasn’t avoiding I was shirking, and when I wasn’t shirking I was dragging my feet, and when I wasn’t dragging my feet I was passively resisting and…you get the point.

The point is, I’m ready. I am finally ready.

I am special after all, have I told you that? One of 43 babies born on the same day: October 1, 1989 at twelve in the afternoon and not a second later, to women who just minutes earlier were not pregnant. Some were, in fact, virgins!

No, Roger! Master Bevins, why are you running away? After everything I’ve told you, _this_ is what you cannot stomach?

Blasphemous! That’s a melo-dramatic word. I certainly implied no such thing. Can you blaspheme when you don’t believe in god? I think not!

What comes afterwards, pray tell me. You fake Hargreeves. Fake because if you’re really here that means you didn’t succeed and of course you did. If only to spite me.

If you’re real, perhaps you’ll answer a question. What lies beyond, where you are. Bliss? Silence? Eternal torment? You can’t tell me? I have to see for myself.

Have you seen Dave, is he there?

You don’t know? You won’t say. To learn more, I must travel with you. 

But I have work to do! Information to impart! My gift to nurture. The world to save. I am not finished.

I am _not finished_. I am needed in the real, flesh and blood world. 

Won’t someone listen to me!

\- klaus hargreeves 

Won't someone

_Oh._

\- klaus hargreeves

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Content Warning:**  
>  Deaths that have already occurred, including of young children, soldiers in battle, and both POV characters (Klaus and Roger Bevins III, a canonically gay character, somewhere in his early twenties, who committed suicide after being rejected by his lover and regretted the decision, both before and after his death).
> 
> **Story Notes:**  
>  1\. The cemetery is the Oak Hill Cemetery in Georgetown, where _Lincoln in the Bardo_ takes place.  
> 2\. The battle Klaus dies in is the first battle of Bull Run, which took place in Manassas, Va. on July 21, 1861. In other words, Klaus talks to Roger Bevins III several months before the events of the novel occur.  
> 3\. Some text has been taken directly from _Lincoln in the Bardo_ :  
> \- An umbrella ripped open by a wind I could not feel  
> \- a smoking wreck of a rail car...charred and expiring individuals trapped within her barking out the most obscene demands as her ‘wheels’ turned mercilessly upon several hogs who...possessed human faces and voices, and were crying out most piteously as the wheels turned and turned and crushed and re-crushed them, giving off the smell of burning pork.   
> \- Fruit responsive to one's wishing. A joyful provocation of rose petals: red, pink, yellow, white, purple  
> \- Loon-call in the dark; calf-cramp in the spring; neck-rub in the parlor; milk-sip at end of day. A gaggle of children trudging through a side-blown December flurry; a friendly match-share beneath some collision-tilted streetlight; a frozen clock, bird-visited within its high tower; cold water from a tin jug; toweling off one’s clinging shirt post-June rain.  
> 4\. "From the top of the head shoots a clear jet of light," and "Being now a thing with one arm, now with one leg, now with twenty legs, now a pair of legs without a head, now a head without a body," come from _A Christmas Carol_.  
> 5\. The lyrics Klaus sings are from: MCR, _The End._ and Ibeyi, _Ghosts_.  
> 6\. I am no expert on mid-19th century, mid-Atlantic American life. I have no idea if Roger Bevins' mother would have kept chickens.  
> 


End file.
